North Korean restaurants in China offer a rare and somewhat surreal opportunity for outsiders to interact with citizens of the hermit kingdom.

Flag pins usually give away the fact that a Korean restaurant serves cuisine of the north, instead of the south. The authentic northerners wear the blue-and-red pins on their chests, keep their opinions focused on the food and offer minimal personality during the requisite dinner-time performance that accompanies a barbeque meal.

News Monday of the death of Kim Jong Il appeared to leave some of China’s North Korean restaurateurs in shock, though it was exhibited in different ways.

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In the Shanghai district Hongqiao, the glass façade of the almost-clinically clean D.P.R Korean Restaurant displays intertwined Korean and Chinese flags, plus Santa Claus. But the mood Monday was far from jolly inside the suddenly and indefinitely closed establishment.